Good morning! this is your Mount Laurel martial arts guy Peter Liciaga with your personal safety morning brief.
As always, I hope you’re having a great morning and you took time to get in your morning wake-up workout and had a great breakfast AND you took the time to prepare your mindset for your day.
Today’s personal safety morning brief will be about Family Safety When Leaving Your Home
It’s got great information and I know that you will enjoy it.
Now before we get started, if you live in the Mount Laurel NJ area, most likely you’ve heard about the great work that we are doing at Dinoto Karate Center. If you have children, it would mean the world to me if you enrolled your child in martial arts program to learn not only how to defend themselves against bullies and other very mean kids, but to teach them discipline, focus and self-control. I have a special beginner program and I would be honored if you would enroll them in it. It is very easy to do. All you have to do is visit me at MountLaurelMartialArts.com to get the details.
Great, now let’s get into your families safety when leaving your home.
I not going to address home defense, as that is an extensive topic in itself, but rather the lesser discussed aspects of leaving your home. This is the moment where you leave the safety of your home and go into the world. Unfortunately this is a transitional space where we can encounter danger. This danger is also further compounded when dealing with accompanying family members, particularly small children. Sadly, attacks directly outside of the home are a rather common form of crime. We need to accept the world for the way it is, and part of that acceptance is the reality that violence can touch us even within our own yard or driveway.
When leaving the home in the morning when you perhaps head out to work and drop the children off at school or day care, get in the habit of being the first to open the door, rather than allowing a child to do so. Upon opening your door assess the outside environment. Once again, we should do a quick scan for anomalies. What we are looking for may depend greatly on our environment. If you live in an urban or suburban environment there may be nothing unusual about other people being in front of your home, perhaps on the sidewalk. If this is routine, we still want to scan for anomalies. Are these people neighbors you recognize? Are they just other people walking their kids to the bus stop? Is there an individual or group of people that appears out of place?
If you live in a rural area then any people at all being in your yard or outside your house may very well be out of the ordinary and warrant your attention. Again, the overriding principle is that we want to be aware of anything that is an anomaly among the normal setting of the environment. If you live in a suburban neighborhood and in the morning there is typically neighbors walking on the sidewalk with their children then you know what looks normal. If there is a suspicious looking individual standing near your vehicle then go with your instinct and take yourself and your children right back inside. Doing a quick scan of your surroundings before going outside of your own door is a good habit, and doing so before the children follow you out the door is a sound tactic for your daily routine.
The world is a dangerous place and any place accessible to human beings is potentially dangerous, including your own home and yard. Enjoy your life, but be prepared, even in and around the home.
